Project ____ may be defined as a test of whether a project has met scope, time, and cost goals.

Quality Glossary Definition: Plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle

Variations: plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycle, Deming cycle, Shewhart cycle. Understand the evolution of these variations.

The Plan-do-check-act cycle (Figure 1) is a four-step model for carrying out change. Just as a circle has no end, the PDCA cycle should be repeated again and again for continuous improvement. The PDCA cycle is considered a project planning tool.

Figure 1: Plan-do-check-act cycle

• When to use the PDCA cycle
• PDCA example
• PDCA resources

When to Use the PDCA Cycle

Use the PDCA cycle when:

• Starting a new improvement project
• Developing a new or improved design of a process, product, or service
• Defining a repetitive work process
• Planning data collection and analysis in order to verify and prioritize problems or root causes
• Implementing any change
• Working toward continuous improvement

The Plan-do-check-act Procedure

1. Plan: Recognize an opportunity and plan a change.
2. Do: Test the change. Carry out a small-scale study.
3. Check: Review the test, analyze the results, and identify what you’ve learned.
4. Act: Take action based on what you learned in the study step. If the change did not work, go through the cycle again with a different plan. If you were successful, incorporate what you learned from the test into wider changes. Use what you learned to plan new improvements, beginning the cycle again.

Plan-Do-Check-Act Example

The Pearl River, NY School District, a 2001 recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, used the PDCA cycle as a model for defining most of their work processes, from the boardroom to the classroom.

The PDCA model was the basic structure for the district’s:

• Overall strategic planning
• Needs analysis
• Curriculum design and delivery
• Staff goal-setting and evaluation
• Provision of student services and support services
• Classroom instruction

Figure 2 shows their "A+ Approach to Classroom Success." This is a continuous cycle of designing curriculum and delivering classroom instruction. Improvement is not a separate activity—it is built into the work process.

Plan

The A+ Approach begins with a "plan" step, which the school district calls "analyze." In this step, students’ needs are analyzed by examining a range of data available in Pearl River’s electronic data "warehouse." The data reviewed includes everything from grades to performance on standardized tests. Data can be analyzed for individual students or stratified by grade, gender, or any other subgroup. Because PDCA does not specify how to analyze data, a separate data analysis process (Figure 3) is used here as well as in other processes throughout the organization.

Do

The A+ Approach continues with two "do" steps:

1. The "align" step asks what the national and state standards require and how they will be assessed. Teaching staff also plans curricula by looking at what is taught at earlier and later grade levels and in other disciplines to ensure a clear continuity of instruction throughout the student’s schooling. Teachers develop individual goals to improve their instruction where the "analyze" step showed any gaps.
2. The "act" step is where instruction is provided, following the curriculum and teaching goals. Within set parameters, teachers vary the delivery of instruction based on each student’s learning rates and styles.

Check

Formal and informal assessments take place continually, from daily teacher assessments to six-week progress reports to annual standardized tests. Teachers also can access comparative data on the electronic database to identify trends. High-need students are monitored by a special child study team.

Throughout the school year, if assessments show students are not learning as expected, mid-course corrections are made (such as re-instruction, changing teaching methods, and more direct teacher mentoring). Assessment data become input for the next step in the cycle.

Act

In this example, the "act" step is "standardization." When goals are met, the curriculum design and teaching methods are considered standardized. Teachers share best practices in formal and informal settings. Results from this cycle become input for the "analyze" phase of the next A+ Approach cycle.

PDCA Resources

You can also search articles, case studies, and publications for PDCA resources.

Articles

A Systematic View (Lean & Six Sigma Review) Modular Kaizen is an improvement approach that integrates quality techniques into the busy schedule of everyday activities. The Modular Kaizen approach is complementary to the PDCA and DMAIC models of quality improvement, as described in this article.

A Lean Approach To Promoting Employee Suggestions (Quality Progress) This simple, low-tech approach maintains the visual process and easily communicates where each suggestion is in the PDCA process without the need for email, databases or other technological means. 

Circling Back (Quality Progress) There still seems to be much confusion surrounding W. Edwards Deming’s plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycle. This article examines the three main misunderstandings surrounding PDSA and PDCA cycles.

The Benefits of PDCA (Quality Progress) The brief history of PDCA and an example of PDCA in action help establish the use of this cycle for continuous process improvement.

Tell Me About It (Quality Progress) Based on the PDSA cycle, this article introduces the plan-do-study-act-export (PDSA-X) cycle, which supports the collaborative pursuit of excellence across organizational boundaries, geography and time.

Case Studies

Stewardship And Sustainability: Serigraph's Journey To ISO 14001 (Journal for Quality and Participation) By utilizing ISO 14001 and Lean Six Sigma, including the PDCA cycle, as templates for continuous environmental improvement, a variety of actions are taken to become a socially responsible organization (SRO) and minimize Serigraph Inc.’s environmental footprint

Message Received (Six Sigma Forum Magazine) The science of experimental design allows you to project the impact of many factors by testing a few of them. If the project follows the DMAIC process, you can make some adjustments to the PDCA outline, which is the approach taken by Deemsys Inc., a training organization that wanted to better understand the response rate of its email marketing efforts.

Courses

Applied Lean

ASQ's Quality 101

Lean Foundations

Webcasts

"An Introduction to the PDCA Cycle," a three-part webcast series by Jack ReVelle:

• Part 1: This introduction walks through the PDCA cycle’s origins in the scientific method, as well as its connection to the Deming-Shewhart cycles.
• Part 2: This webcast compares and connects PDCA to other methodologies, including DMAIC, lean, and ISO 9001.
• Part 3: The final webcast provides an example application of PDCA and explores the benefits of using PDCA.

Adapted from The Quality Toolbox, Second Edition, ASQ Quality Press.

Project scope is the part of project planning that involves determining and documenting a list of specific project goals, deliverables, tasks, costs and deadlines. The documentation of a project's scope is called a scope statement or terms of reference. It explains the boundaries of the project, establishes responsibilities for each team member and sets up procedures for how completed work will be verified and approved.

During the project, this documentation helps the project team remain focused and on task. The scope statement also provides the team with guidelines for making decisions about change requests during the project. Note that a project's scope statement should not be confused with its charter; a project's charter simply documents that the project exists.

Large projects tend to change as they progress. If a project has been effectively "scoped" at the beginning, then approving and managing these changes will be easier. When documenting a project's scope, stakeholders should be as specific as possible to avoid scope creep. Scope creep is a situation in which one or more parts of a project end up requiring more work, time or effort because of poor planning or miscommunication.

Effective scope management requires good communication. That ensures everyone on the team understands the extent of the project and agrees upon exactly how the project's goals will be met. As part of scope management, the team leader should ask for approvals and signoffs from stakeholders as the project proceeds, ensuring that the proposed finished project meets everyone's needs.

The importance of defining a project's scope

Writing a project scope statement that includes information on the project deliverables is a first step in project planning. The benefits a project scope statement provides to any organization undertaking a new initiative include the following:

• articulates what the project entails so that all stakeholders can understand what's involved;
• provides a roadmap that managers can use to assign tasks, schedule work and budget appropriately;
• helps focus team members on common objectives; and
• prevents projects, particularly complex ones, from expanding beyond the established vision.

Establishing project scope ensures that projects are focused and executed to expectations. The scope provides a strong foundation for managing a project as it moves forward and helps ensure that resources aren't diverted or wasted on out-of-scope elements.

How to define the scope of a project

Defining project scope requires input from the project stakeholders. They work with project managers to establish the key elements of budget, objectives, quality and timeline.

To determine scope, project managers must collect requirements for what the stakeholders need from the project. This includes the following elements:

• the project's objective and deliverables;
• when the project must be completed; and
• how much the stakeholders can pay for it.

The goal is to gather and record precise and accurate information during this process, so the project scope reflects all requirements. Doing this improves the chances for project leaders to deliver products that meet stakeholder expectations on time and on budget.

Writing a project scope statement

A project scope statement is a written document that includes all the required information for producing the project deliverables. It is more detailed than a statement of work; it helps the project team remain focused and on task. The scope statement also provides the project team leader or facilitator with guidelines for making decisions about change requests during the project.

The project scope statement establishes what is not included in its initiatives, either implicitly or explicitly. Objectives and tasks not listed in the scope statement should be considered out of scope. Project managers can also list specific work that will not be part of the project.

As such, this statement establishes the boundaries of a project. Project leaders must take those requirements and map what should happen and in what order those items should occur. This leads to the creation of a work breakdown structure (WBS). The WBS breaks down planned work into smaller, defined portions and required tasks.

A well-articulated scope statement is a critical part of effective project management. Project scope should be determined for every project, regardless of what project management method is used. Stakeholders for the project should review the project scope statement, revise it as necessary and approve it.

Once the project scope statement is completed and approved, project managers can assign tasks and give their teams directions on what they need to do to meet the target timelines, budget and goals.

Scope planning and management

Updates and changes are part of the project management process. As work progresses, managers must carefully control what changes are made to the project scope and document them. This requires strong project management skills.

The change management process also requires that project managers and stakeholders adhere to the project scope statement. They must recognize what elements are within the project scope and what requests are out of scope.

Change management processes help project managers determine how to evaluate requests for updates and alterations to the project. Distinguishing between needed requests and ones that are out of scope enables organizations to avoid scope creep.

Scope creep is when more work is tacked onto a project while it is underway. It can add costs and unnecessary work, while distracting from the objectives and threatening the quality of the intended deliverables.

Project scope example

Scope statements attempt to provide key stakeholders with all the information they'll need. The following are some elements that should be included in a scope statement:

• Introduction. This defines the what and why of a project. An example would be "This content creation and marketing project is being undertaken by the company RealContent Inc. to distribute articles on its blog and social media sites to raise brand awareness and increase traffic to the website."
• Project scope. This defines the project requirements. It sets the general goals for the project schedule and tasks and identifies who will be involved. In the content creation example, it mightstate: "The project will include research, writing, content strategy and search engine optimization, and publishing on the company's website and social media profiles, in March of 2021. John Smith, RealContent content director, will oversee these tasks. Staff and contract writers will create the deliverables."
• Deliverables. The deliverables section defines what will be provided at the end of the project and specifies a submission date. In our example, "Deliverables for the project will include a well-researched, 2,000-word article to be delivered no later than Feb. 28, 2021. Ten related and linkable articles, expanding on points in the main article will be delivered on that same deadline."
• Acceptance criteria. This describes the project objectives and the metrics that will be used to assess success. For example, "The main article will gain 3,000 cumulative pageviews within six months of publication and generate two new leads."
• Exclusions. This describes what will not be included in the project. For example, "The project will not need the creation of multimedia to go with the articles."
• Constraints. This lists hard limits of the project and things that cannot be changed. Project constraints may pertain to the project schedule, project budget or technical issues. For example, "The project has a hard submission date of Feb.28, 2021, and a firm budget of $5,000 dollars."

Project scope vs. product scope

Project scope should not be confused with product scope. Product scope defines the capabilities, characteristics, features and functions of the deliverables at the end of the project.

Project leaders should create a separate product scope statement. They should use both the project scope and the product scope statements to support each other and establish a clear understanding of what every project aims to achieve.

The takeaway

Defining project scope is an important step in project planning and management. Before a project begins, project managers need to understand what the scope of the project is to determine what must be done and what falls outside of the project.

Project scope is defined in the scope statement, a document that provides the objectives, schedules, tasks and deliverables of a project. Scope statements align stakeholders' expectations and give projects a framework for success.

Once a project is underway, it is important to keep it on track and within scope. Various project management tools and strategies are available to help teams do that.